Ordinary Joe

With Malcolm Turnbull's leadership in decline, the Liberal Party may look to Joe Hockey. But does the affable shadow treasurer have what it takes to lead? Misha Schubert reports.

October 9, 2009 — 10.29pm

THE story of how Brendan Nelson came to live in Joe Hockey's garage says a lot about the big man. It was mid 1997, Nelson's marriage had fallen apart and he was broke paying child support. He asked Hockey if he could move from the room he rented in the house to the shed to save cash.

Hockey not only agreed — he began to take an active interest in Nelson's welfare. Calls were made to Nelson's old mates asking them to keep an eye on him.

Joe Hockey

When Hockey went overseas, he brought back new running shoes for Nelson to give to his own children, and refused payment for them. And the next year — when Hockey was promoted by John Howard and Nelson wasn't — Hockey asked his dad to go around and check that his mate was OK.

"He was in tears because his son had been promoted and I hadn't — that's the kind of person, the kind of family they are," Nelson reflected yesterday. "Joe is decent, fair, generous, kind and thoughtful. He can also be tough and he can be a thorough bastard if he has to be."

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High praise, especially given that Hockey voted for Malcolm Turnbull as he deposed Nelson for the leadership in August last year.

There are a mountain of such stories about Joe Hockey. Acts of kindness, big and small, often unbidden and many unheralded. The car he offered to deposed Liberal MP Ross Cameron as his marriage broke up. The refuge he provided at his farm outside Cairns for a young Aboriginal girl who had been raped at Aurukun. The call he made to public servant Godwin Grech at the peak of the OzCar crisis to check if he was OK. And on and on it goes.

That he has a big heart is without question. Whether his intellect and work ethic are equally colossal is a topic of greater dispute. His friends and former staff insist they are. But at a particularly jovial lunch in Sydney yesterday, the former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Max Moore-Wilton, was heard to describe Hockey as a "halfwit". Clearly not everyone is a fan.

There are two persistent criticisms of Joe Hockey. One is that he speaks before he thinks. The other is that he is not across the detail. On the first charge, his backers concede the point — but argue it works for him.

"It goes hand in hand with being a passionate person," his former chief of staff Matt Hingerty observes. "Joe wants to be honest. He wears his heart on his sleeve and the more Machiavellian practitioners of the political arts would say that's a weakness; I'd say that is a strength, it's why the punters like him. He's passionate and prone to saying what he thinks."

The command of detail is more hotly contested between friend and foe. His supporters note his ministerial career was full of challenges requiring a grasp of technicalities: driving a major overhaul of the tourism industry with his white paper; conquering obscure points of industrial relations law to craft the Fairness Test backdown when he was workplace minister; understanding the complexities of merging six agencies into one as human services minister.

CRITICS beg to differ. They concede he is good at the punchy political line — but accuse him of not having a clear and consistent political philosophy. "He can come across as quite compelling and articulate but you reflect on what he said afterwards and there's not a lot to hang on to," says one. "He tends to string together these great lines, but when you look at the totality of it — what does he really stand for? — and it doesn't seem like much."

If opinions part on such matters, they converge again on the question of Hockey's considerable charm. He has an easy knack with people. He is enormously likeable. And he is famous for his friendships across the political aisle.

First there was all that television camaraderie with Kevin Rudd on Sunrise — until Liberal strategists felt it was giving too much of a leg-up to the Labor rival.

He's also been chummy with Labor headkicker Anthony Albanese. Then there is his fondness for Bob Hawke, who quipped when he learnt that Hockey was to become a father for the third time: "Time to put the cue back in the rack, son."

To get a sense of Joe Hockey, look at the family tree. It is a merging of two cultures. There is the mercantile tale of his Armenian-Palestinian father Richard, who arrived in Australia in 1948 with nothing and built a career in real estate from scratch. His mother is North Shore, cashmere and pearls, a big-hearted former model who defied her own mother to date the "wog" behind the deli counter.

Like Rudd, Hockey has acquired wealth through the business aptitude of his wife. A former Sydney Swans physio, Melissa Babbage is head of foreign exchange and global finance at Deutsche Bank. They have two children, Xavier and Adelaide, and a third due on October 19. They mean the world to Hockey, and he is an attentive father and husband.

As Hockey's political star has risen, so has the intensity of Labor's attacks on him. They've branded him "Sloppy Joe" — a slur aimed not just at his size (a technique the Coalition used on Kim Beazley, incidentally) but on his reputation for toil and detail.

A few weeks ago the ALP put about research suggesting voters were dubious about his work ethic and eye for detail. He insists such slings don't wound him personally, but he understands they will only intensify if he gains more traction politically.

Hockey is a sharper politician than the man he hopes to succeed in time — but not just yet. Unlike Malcolm Turnbull, who is smart and terrifyingly well-read but can get bogged down in the detail, Hockey can deliver a cut-through line.

But to date he has shown no sign of the mongrel instinct when it comes to leadership.

Last year some backers urged him to move to state politics, where he would become premier in a canter at the 2012 election. Hockey was said to be open to the draft, but refused to move against Barry O'Farrell. State MPs didn't want blood on the floor, and the idea evaporated.

Hockey has made it clear to those urging him to replace Turnbull that he doesn't want bloodshed at a federal level either. He won't challenge, but he would be prepared to accept the job if the post became vacant. Turnbull, of course, shows no sign of willingly giving way.

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How the issue will resolve itself still has a long way to run. But his fans have no doubt that he has the pull to make it happen one day.

"There are leaders who have the ability to build momentum and those who don't," observes Cameron. "One of the magical factors is the ability to make other people want to be on their team — I think Joe has that in spades."